Assessment of shoreline positional uncertainty using remote sensing and GIS techniques: A case study from the east coast of India

The focus of this research was to assess the shoreline changes by comparing the satellite data from 1980 to 2020. The study area falls in the region between Kodiakarai and Nagapattinam of the east coast of India, which has frequently been distressed by storm surges and cyclones in the Bay of Bengal. The Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) detects and measures the erosional and accretional shoreline positions through the statistics of the Shoreline Change Envelope, Net Shoreline Movement, End Point Rate, Linear Regression Rate, and Weighted Linear Regression. The results show that the shoreline from Kodiakkarai to Nagapattinam suffered severe erosion of 17.7% in total with an average annual erosion rate of 3.4 m/year from 1980 to 2020 and the rate of erosion ranged between 0.1 m/year to 19.8 m/year. About 90.5% of the total shoreline was faced high erosion during the period between 2000 and 2010. The maximum erosion was about 1061 m from 2000 to 2010, the maximum accretion was found to be 1002 m in transects at Kodiakkarai during 2010 to 2020. After the effect of 2004 tsunami, the corresponding changes in littoral currents caused the drastic erosion and accretion in this shoreline. The DSAS prediction model shows that 19.3% of the current shoreline will erode in 2030. The maximum predicted erosion is 406 m at Kodiakkarai and the maximum predicted accretion is 148 m at Nagapattinam region. The coastal zone from Kodiakkarai to Nagapattinam needs special attention to prevent the erosion and it is recommended to build suitable coastal protection structures along the coast for sustainable development and to execute the coastal zone management for this region.